Welcome to venticool!
venticool is the international ventilative cooling platform launched in October 2012 to accelerate the uptake of ventilative cooling by raising awareness, sharing experience and steering research and development efforts in the field of ventilative cooling. In 2020, venticool decided to broaden its scope towards resilient ventilative cooling. The platform supports better guidance for the appropriate implementation of resilient ventilative cooling strategies as well as adequate credit for such strategies in building regulations. The platform philosophy is to pull resources together and to avoid duplicating efforts to maximize the impact of existing and new initiatives. venticool joins forces with international projects (in particular IEA EBC annexes 62 (ventilative cooling) and, more recently, annex 80 (Resilient cooling for buildings)) and organizations with significant experience and/or well identified in the field of ventilation and thermal comfort like AIVC (www.aivc.org) and REHVA (www.rehva.eu). The platform has been initiated by INIVE EEIG with (International Network for Information on Ventilation and Energy Performance) with the financial and/or technical support of its partners. Ventilative cooling as part of a resilient cooling strategy Ventilative cooling can be in many circumstances a key element in a sustainable strategy for thermal comfort during periods of cooling demand. However, its potential can be very low if not combined with a good overall building design and solar control strategy. Furthermore, studies on the performance of existing low energy cooling systems (like ventilative cooling) concluded that even with current satisfactory performance, these technologies fail to function adequately in the extraordinary scenarios or shocks (e.g. high occupancy, power failure, high humidity production, pandemics etc. ). A generally agreed definition of ‘resilient cooling’ is not yet available but the following description gives a good indication of the resilience of a building as an “ability of the building to withstand disruptions caused by extreme weather events, man-made disasters, power failure, change in use and atypical conditions; and to maintain capacity to adapt, learn and transform”. In line with the scope of IEA EBC annex 80 Resilient Cooling of Buildings, the venticool platform has broadened its field of attention to resilient ventilative cooling strategies. Ventilative cooling in standards, legislation and energy performance calculations Because of their increasing impact on building design options, energy performance regulations are undoubtedly key market drivers. This is a specific concern for ventilative cooling strategies as they require rather mature assessment methods for thermal comfort and ventilation losses to be correctly accounted for. More specifically, standards, legislations and compliance tools need to include:
IEA ABC Annex 62 Ventilative Cooling has pointed out limitations regarding the design of ventilative cooling systems in CEN, ISO and national standards as well as national regulations as e.g. used in energy performance regulations which are detrimental to ventilative cooling. These include the poor handling of usage profiles and control strategies, in other words, assumptions on by how much and when the airflow rates are increased to meet acceptable thermal comfort conditions. Furthermore an evaluation of the “ventilative cooling potential” is needed for the designer to make the right decisions in the early design phase, showing for how long throughout a year pure ventilative cooling solutions are possible and when supplementary systems could be used. Actually, a design tool by the IEA EBC Annex 62 was developed called “ventilative cooling potential tool” to help with this. In fact, adequate credit for ventilative cooling should account for thermal comfort criteria as well as ideally, indoor air quality, visual comfort, and noise. It should reflect the effective cooling potential which greatly varies within a single day, calling for rather sophisticated calculations seldom used in regulations. The good news is that CEN and ISO have ongoing activities for a better assessment of ventilative cooling through new work items expected to be published around 2023. The regulatory implementation of ventilative cooling strategies differs from country to country and therefore attention to the national approaches also falls within the scope of venticool. |
The January 2021 issue of the “Energy Efficiency and Indoor Climate in Buildings” newsletter has just been released. This monthly online newspaper contains relevant information on the Air Infiltration and Ventilation Centre (AIVC), the building and ductwork airtightness platform (TightVent Europe), the platform for resilient ventilative cooling (venticool), the Dynastee network, the Indoor Environmental Quality – Global Alliance (IEQ-GA) & EU relevant information. The paper is available at the first week of every month at: http://news.inive.org/
We would like to encourage you to subscribe to get informed on a regular basis on our platforms’ activities.
After careful consideration by the Steering Committee and from input by authors, ASHRAE and AIVC have decided to postpone the conference, which was initially scheduled for September 14-16, 2020 in Athens, Greece. The conference “IAQ 2020: Indoor Environmental Quality Performance … Continue reading
The EBC Annex 80 held its third Expert Meeting on November 5th and 6th which also indicates half-time. Over 50 participants from 15 countries took part in three online sessions scheduled to take on the large time lag between the Americas, … Continue reading
From 2021, a new energy performance of buildings regulation, the so-called NTA8800, comes into force in the Netherlands. 4 indicators are used: BENG1 represents the energy demand, BENG2 the fossil primary energy consumption, BENG3 the fraction of renewable energy production … Continue reading
There has been an overall lack of ventilative cooling integration in existing European technical documents regarding “system design” and “performance” aspects, and therefore work relevant to ventilative cooling applications started up in CEN/TC 156 and ISO/TC 205 in various working … Continue reading
The Air Infiltration and Ventilation Centre (https://www.aivc.org/) with support from ASHRAE and REHVA organized the webinar “COVID-19 Ventilation related guidance by ASHRAE and REHVA” held on Friday November 20th, 2020 at 16:00-17:15 (CET). The webinar presented the guidelines by REHVA and ASHRAE and also had a closer look to the similarities and differences in both guidelines.
Presentations and Speakers:
- Introduction, Arnold Janssens – chair of AIVC WG COVID-19
- REHVA guidance regarding ventilation, Jarek Kurnitski – chair of REHVA COVID-19 task force
- ASHRAE guidance regarding ventilation, William P. Bahnfleth – chair of ASHRAE’s Epidemic task force
- Similarities and differences between REHVA’s & ASHRAE’s guidance, Valérie Leprince – member AIVC COVID-19 working group & ASHRAE’s Epidemic task force
The recordings and the slides are now available online at: https://www.aivc.org/event/20-november-2020-webinar-covid-19-ventilation-related-guidance-ashrae-and-rehva
Progressing the scientific basis of indoor environmental quality is essential to understand which aspects can be better optimised to substantially reduce energy use in buildings. In recent years, IEA Energy in Buildings and Communities (EBC) international research projects have been investigating for this purpose both indoor air quality and thermal comfort. The embodied impacts of buildings and their services systems are also a focus of EBC’s research. Other current EBC projects are expanding the programme’s communications outreach, so the scientific and engineering research knowledge generated can be more widely shared, not only within the academic community, but also with policy and decision makers in industry and governments. The aim of this webinar is to share the outcomes of several concluding EBC research projects in this area and to provide updates on some of the innovative work taking place within the programme.
This webinar is organized by the International Energy Agency’s Technology Collaboration Programme on Energy in Buildings and Communities. The webinar is facilitated by INIVE (www.inive.org).
Presentations and Speakers:
- Welcome by Dr Takao Sawachi, EBC Executive Committee Chair
- EBC Overview by Prof Paul Ruyssevelt, EBC Executive Committee Vice Chair
- EBC Annex 5: Air Infiltration and Ventilation Centre by Dr Peter Wouters
- EBC Annex 68: High Indoor Air Quality in Low Energy Buildings, Prof Carsten Rode
- EBC Annex 69: Adaptive Thermal Comfort by Prof Yingxin Zhu
- EBC Working Group on Cities and Communities by Helmut Strasser
- EBC Annex 72: Life Cycle Impacts by Rolf Frischknecht
- EBC Annex 74: Living Lab Platform by Prof Karsten Voss
- Summary by Prof Xudong Yang, EBC Quality Assurance Sub-Committee Chair
Participation to the webinar is FREE but requires you to REGISTER for the event.
For further information please download the flyer.
The venticool website has now been updated to include also information from IEA EBC annex 80 resilient cooling of buildings. This is part of a collaboration agreement between INIVE, AIVC, venticool & IEA EBC annex 80. Stay tuned to be informed about all the latest findings on resilient ventilative cooling!
The 16th issue of the venticool newsletter is now available! Specific contents include:
- Foreword
- Postponement of 41st AIVC ‐ ASHRAE IAQ ‐ 9th TightVent & 7th venticool joint conference in Athens, Greece
- IEA EBC Annex 80 Resilient Cooling for Buildings – Proceedings from the 2nd Expert Meeting
- Selected papers from the AIVC – TightVent‐ venticool 2019 Conference published at the April 2020 edition of the REHVA Journal
- The REHVA & IEQ‐GA Covid‐19 taskforces
- Recordings & Slides from the webinar on Ventilative Cooling Design and Examples
- AIVC Literature List 34 on “Ventilative Cooling”
- IEA EBC annex 86 “Energy Efficient Smart IAQ Management for residential buildings”
To download the newsletter please visit: https://venticool.eu/venticool-publications/newsletters/
The EBC Annex 80 held its second Expert Meeting on April 20th and 21st as its first fully web-based meeting. Over 50 participants from 15 countries took part in three online sessions schedule to take on the large time lag … Continue reading